Thursday, July 18, 2013

Fine lines

Let’s act as if the main threat to young black men in
America is overzealous neighborhood watch volunteers who erroneously
consider them suspicious, call the police and follow them, then shoot
them in self-defense after a violent altercation in confusing
circumstances that will never be entirely disentangled. Let’s pretend
that this happens all the time. ....In short, let’s take a terrible event and make it a festival for all
our ideological and racial ax-grinding and a showcase for our inability
or unwillingness to reason clearly. Let’s do it in perpetually high
dudgeon and while simultaneously patting ourselves on the back about our
fearlessness and honesty.....from Conversation about race? Get real by Rich Lowery, Politico

I think I said this the other day -- I saw the "Morning Joe" crew going crazy over the Cohen column the other day. The insufferable Robert Gibbs was on and they're all blathering, once again, about the "national conversation" we should be having. But it was clear that the only conversation they were interested in having was one in which everyone agreed with them. Cohen was HAVING a conversation. And they were having none of it.

Jeez, leave it alone, Eric. You won. A number of months ago, you predicted that there wasn't a case for Zimmerman's conviction, and that was the verdict. Try to show some sympathy for the fact that an unarmed person died in all this.

{Intentional Violation -- this is a repost that really belong here -- I will not abuse this privilege}

I have always said that Zorn does a superb job on matters of the police and prosecutors abusing the rights of the criminally accused. This case is no different. Intellectual rigor serves most people well.

I am surprised by President Obama, Eric Holder, and Tavis Smiley. They had the opportunity to lead many African-Americans to a more mature/nuanced understanding of such matters. Rather they pandered to the lynching mob mentality of many. After the Henry Louis Gates Debacle they should have known better.

There is a symmetry between the right and the left in that both sides have their pandering idiots – think Sarah Palin.

But the asymmetries are what intrigue me. To make my point let me somewhat caricature standard ‘”put-downs.” Of course this caricature does not apply to all righties or lefties.

Righties will “put-down” a fellow conservative or a lefty by attacking their “head.” The put down will be of the form – “you lack intelligence, learning, and the ability to reason."

Lefties will attack fellow lefties and righties by attacking their heart/character. Thus everyone to the right of a particular lefty is a “racist – homophobe – hater.”

Oh and heck, as long as I'm on the topic, here's my nomination for a fine line from Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I think responds rather neatly to Mr. Lowry's quote above:

An capricious anti-intellectualism, a fanatical imbecility, a willful amnesia, an eternal sunshine upon our spotless minds, is white supremacy's gravest legacy. You would not know from reading Richard Cohen that the idea that blacks are more criminally prone, is older than the crime stats we cite, that it has been cited since America's founding to justify the very kinds of public safety measures Cohen now endorses. Black criminality is more than myth; it is socially engineered prophecy. If you believe a people to be inhuman, you confine them to inhuman quarters and inhuman labor, and subject them to inhuman policy. When they then behave inhumanely to each other, you take it is as proof of your original thesis. The game is rigged. Because it must be.

Yep -- that bit of wisdom from Taxpayer and Ta-Nehisi Coates -- should have determined the GZ criminal trial. That should have been one of the jury instructions. Perhaps the only one. Certainly the best of liberal/progressive thought. OOPS! I should have warned "Irony - Satire Alert -- in the style of Stewart and Colbert."

BTW the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago is as safe as Lake Forest -- and anyone who claims otherwise is a g-damned racist. OOPS! Again.

1) The point is not so much that this exact scenario plays out often -- which it does not, of course -- but that young black men being incorrectly suspected of criminality does happen a lot and that has other harms to it. It is not necessarily inappropriate to think about that issue -- and an honest evaluation probably is going to involve some things neither "side" is thrilled to admit.

2) To the extent that this is about media coverage, let's pretend that strangers kidnapping pretty, white girls makes up a significant portion of serious crime.

@Mike M - You don't get to steal that base. If you want to argue against those perceptions, you actually have to do it. And, no, disproving a straw man statement that involves the word "every" will not count.

If you were smart enough to read or even skim the article I posted before running your yap, you would have seen that Coates said, in the very second sentence:

"[B]ased on the case presented by the state, and based on Florida law, George Zimmerman should not have been convicted of second degree murder or manslaughter."

You don't seem to be actually illiterate, so I can only assume that you decided to attack someone's position without having made the smallest effort to comprehend it. Cases of intellectual bankruptcy don't come much clearer than that.

It never is about racism, is it? White (Hispanic) guy kills a black kid and walks (which never would have happened in the reverse) - not about racism. 50 (long underfunded) schools close in predominantly black neighborhoods putting black kids in danger of gang violence - not racism. The two-year-old daughter of a Nigerian immigrant ends up on CTA tracks under frightful circumstances and the "default assumption" is that it was a scam - but that's not racism either.

Look, before people start howling, racism isn't just consciously harboring negative, hostile attitudes towards blacks/minorities. It's not just throwing out the N-word or running around in white hoods. It has to do with structural systems that people in the dominant culture don't see because we benefit from them. It's about unconscious attitudes that we don't even recognize because we believe that we're "colorblind". I'm not saying that people are evil for it, I'm saying that they're (we're) blind to it and that we need to open our eyes and try to take the perspective of those in non-dominant cultures and validate rather than negate their experiences.

I invite people to visit https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/featuredtask.html and take the Race Implicit Association Test. I'm betting most people will be surprised (full disclosure: I don't score well myself, guess I have some unconscious biases as well - I think we all do).

It's a simple fact that whites are the dominant culture - I hardly think that's disputable. It's also a fact that being part of and benefiting from the dominant culture tends to make people blind to and rather defensive about the privilege we gain from such membership. We all like to think that our achievements are wholly our own, that we would accomplish the same no matter our racial/ethnic/socio-economic background. We like to think that our experience is normative, that we're not biased, etc. But there is no such thing as objectivity. Everyone is highly influenced by their culture and society. Pretending to "objectivity" is really just advancing the dominant culture because you're not even aware of it as a bias.

It's not a matter of placing blame or "white guilt" or anything like that. It's a matter of what do we do from here. How do we acknowledge the harm already done in order to heal it and move on? How do we confront the systems already in place? How do we take ourselves out of our comfort zone to accept and reconcile the realities of other people? Most whites don't really know very many blacks - we still live very much segregated lives (and getting more segregated in many respects). I used to fall into that category myself and I never believed in things like racial profiling, discrimination, etc. And then I married a black man, moved into a diverse neighborhood, sent my daughters to a black-owned daycare and got to genuinely know many black people. It's not so easy to dismiss their experiences anymore now that I hear the same things from so many different people and even witness so many things myself.

Taxpayer: To quote your guy:
"Until black people no longer constitute a disproportionate share of our violent criminals, one assumes. But black people do not constitute such a group -- victims of hundreds of years of racist state policy constitute that group."

What a nonseuqitur. I can understand arguments against profiling,and assuming any young black criminal. I can understand that poverty is the biggest associator with criminality. But to say black people do not constitute a disproportionate share of our violent criminals is just wishful denial done in the fog of ideology. He's trying to use a rhetorical trip to make the statement untrue, but it doesn't compute. If we ever are to have this vaunted honest dialog on race, it has to be actually honest.

I thought it was a good quote - a "fine line" if you will - and never represented it as a synopsis of Coates's entire argument. If you thought it was, that's your intellectual problem, not mine. Moreover, the quote I pulled doesn't mention Zimmerman or imply in any way that he should have been found guilty, so it's pretty apparent you didn't read that with any amount of care either.

I don't care if you don't read the link. I do care if you presume to attack the argument in the link without even skimming it.

I think you're missing his point, but it's a subtle one. Took me a long time to parse it out, actually.

Coates obviously agrees that there's a strong correlation between being the "victim of hundreds of years of racist state policy" and being black. That is, after all, the main point that he is making. And he argues forthrightly that "victims of hundreds of years of racist state policy" constitute a disproportionate share of our violent criminals. By operation of logic, he admits that black people constitute a disproportionate share of our violent criminals. He's not arguing that black people constitute a less-than-proportionate share of our violent criminals.

What he's saying is that it's not blackness or some other trait inherent in black people that makes black people constitute such a disproportionate share, it's the fact that black people are the victims of an incredible history of racist state policy. The argument is not about numbers or proportionality, it's about causation and focus.

"What he's saying is that it's not blackness or some other trait inherent in black people that makes black people constitute such a disproportionate share, it's the fact that black people are the victims of an incredible history of racist state policy. The argument is not about numbers or proportionality, it's about causation and focus."

This needs to be repeated. It's the same when we bomb the hell out of Muslim/Arab countries and then turn around and wonder what it is about those crazy Muslim/Arab people that makes them such violent creatures with so little respect for life that they turn to terrorism. And, of course, the fact that they do turn to terrorism further justifies bombing the hell out of them.

My point was nothing more than that I think Coates is worth reading and his opinions are worth thinking about on this matter. I fail to see how quoting a passage from his writing could possibly be cherry picking.

Martin Luther King had it right that it is about the content of one’s character and not about the color of one’s skin.

It is wrong to make it about race when it need not be. Whites suffer most societal problems in greater absolute numbers than Blacks simply because there are more whites. To do otherwise is the province of race hustlers and charlatans.

If there are violations of the law – then bring it to the attention of President Obama and Eric Holder. Actually that can easily be done by going to the neighborhood office of a Congressman or Congresswoman.

As Mongo observed on another thread – most whites have nothing that can remotely be deemed a privilege.

And I suggest that the motivated poor look to non-white groups and people that are doing well. With respect to groups I am thinking of Jews and Asian-Americans.

I concede that liberals/progressives were in the forefront of the civil rights movement when conservatives/libertarians were not. But that was then and now is now. In Chicago the greatest obstacle (besides no fathers present) to the progress of the poor are liberal/progressive politicians, unions, and other groups.

One should really not pay attention to anyone that calls Eric Zorn a racist.

"As Mongo observed on another thread – most whites have nothing that can remotely be deemed a privilege." Whether that's true or not, if you don't actually believe, all other factors (education, socioeconomic status, etc.) being EQUAL with regard to an individual, that there is still bias against a black person in this country, on the part of many, I think you're deluding yourself. I've not heard of a phenomenon called "driving while white."

Yesterday I read a commentary by (I think) Dawn Turner Trice in the paper about this very subject. I recommend it to everyone. One of her points is that, for instance, if there is some kind of misbehavior on the part of a teen, if that teen is white, he is more likely to get a warning, and if black, is more likely to be arrested & thrown in jail for a time. During which his schooling is interrupted, his family is thrown into a tizzy, etc. She expressed it much better than I did here, and backed it up with facts. I remember thinking that if the subject came up I would tell you all to read it. You'll have to find it, but it shouldn't be too hard.
She's also a good writer, so it's a good read.

Once again Dienne spouts off her racist and bigotted views without any evidence. She claims that if the races would be reversed the black guy would be in jail. Well miss bigot please explain this one then.

LAVEEN - Police are saying more about a shooting at a Taco Bell Tuesday night in which one man died.

They're also identifying the victim as 29-year-old Daniel Adkins.

About 7:30 p.m., a 22-year-old man and his girlfriend ordered food at the Taco Bell drive-thru and were told to pull up while their order was prepared.

At the same time, Adkins stepped around a corner into the path of the vehicle and angry words were exchanged between he and the driver.

They got into an altercation and Adkins was shot once by the driver. He died at the scene.

The driver, a 22-year-old black male, called police but has not been arrested.

At first, the couple claimed that Adkins had a metal pipe that he swung at them -- but it turns out he was holding a dog leash with his yellow lab on the other end.

Family members want that driver arrested, but he's claiming self-defense.

"He needs to be behind bars. I'll never see my brother again," says sister Marina Reyes. "If he felt that my brother was threatening him, he could have easily just rolled up the window and called the cops."

A metal pipe or bat was never located. An independent witness did say Adkins swung his fists in the driver's direction.

“He swung his fist towards the driver window, and at some point the driver shot him,” says Phoenix Police Sgt. Tommy Thompson. “Just because we don’t book a person immediately does not mean we don’t charge a person at a later date.”

The dog, Lady, stayed by Adkins' side until the Humane Society came. Adkins lived with his mom and dad. He's 29, but his family says he's mentally disabled and has the mental capacity of a 12-year-old. He didn't drive, and walked wherever he went.

"This person is still on the loose and I don't agree with that. So he's saying self defense, then where's the weapon? Where's the pipe? They didn't find anything on my brother," says Reyes. "He was just too aggressive, you don't need to go that far."

The black guy named Cornell Jude, 22 ahs NOT been arrested.

So come on you racist Dienne explain this one. I'm waiting or do you want to only live in your small racist biggoted world?

@Jakash so you never ehard of "driving while white". Just because you have ignorance of this fact doesn't mean it doesn't exist. if a white guy drives around certain neighborhoods at night he gets pulled over in a heartbeat. Whites are profiled as drug buyers or looking for hookers.

My mom refused for years to move from the old neighborhood. And on multiple occassions while visiting her I got stopped and asked why I was there. I have no problem with this.

But I do have a problem with your racist views that only minorities face this type of police action.

@Dienne I took that test. I'm 56 and a white male. The race groupings were all slightly above the middle and very close to each other with white, hispanic, black and asian in the order on the chart. What it means is that I don't view anyone as bad by race and slightly think most races are a little positive. See I base my real feelings on actions. I think this is what MLK was getting to.

So I guess this is one more piece of evidence that you are the racist and bigot here. Go look at your own results before saying others need to listen to you. BTW if you want to have that conversation with me and you are willing to listen I'll be happy to do it.

Dienne, I am sympathetic to a lot of your thoughts, though more moderate, I suppose. My question concerns the Harvard test--I took it, and while I certainly think it's an interesting exercise, I found myself wondering if it had less to do with true attitudes than physical dexterity. In virtually every instance in which I made a mistake, I found myself, even before the X came up, saying 'D'oh!--I didn't mean to hit that key." Is the test supposed to stand for the proposition that this isn't just trying to move too quickly on the keyboard, but in reality, a deep-seated negative attitude that I am harboring towards, say, Hispanics? Because I'm not sure I buy that. If administered on a slide show, say, where I could orally respond "Good" or "Bad" based on the preset conditions, I think my results would have been drastically diffferent.

Just wondering if anyone has addressed this concern, or if anyone else taking the test had a similar experience.

Driving while black; driving while young; an old guy driving a beater in Lake Forest (me) – all true.

I live in the most diverse neighborhood in Chicago – Rogers Park.

Do I profile – for sure. But it has mostly to do with attire and deportment. If you dress like a thug and deport yourself like a thug then I will gladly assume you are a thug.

My wife and I spend a lot of time in Evanston – by NU, the lakefront, and downtown. I can easily spot an NU male student of color – by dress and deportment. What are the chances of one of them harming me or my wife. I in 100,000?

How about a WHITE MALE or MALE OF COLOR dressing and deporting himself like a thug. The chances of my getting hurt – 1 in 20; 1 in 10? I do not like them odds and thus will take precautions.

BTW I have often had to make assessments of white males dressing and deporting themselves like thugs in bars in rural Wisconsin.

Finally a lot of help is extended to young properly motivated blacks in the U.S. We have affirmative action. Furthermore a Tribune feature about then candidate Obama said that throughout his life almost all whites including Jews wanted to help him. Thus his first real pushback from whites came after he was elected..

"I found myself wondering if it had less to do with true attitudes than physical dexterity."

Is there a reason why your physical dexterity would be different when trying to match whites with positive words and blacks with negative words than it would be doing the reverse? If your time is consistently slower for one than for the other, I'd suggest it has less to do with physical dexterity than with mental biases.

Thank you for informing me about the phenomenon called "driving while white." That was a fine rebuttal to my poorly considered final sentence. That example doesn't alter the validity of the rest of my comment to JerryB, however.

@Dienne why haven't you responded to the black 22 year old killing the white 29 year old and not being arrested? Is it because it spoils your whole fanatasy that it would never ever happen but somehow still did?

You're an intelligent, educated and experienced fellow. Thus, I imagine that you judge your surroundings based on a number of reasonable factors. Suffice it to say that not everybody in this country is like you.

Tony -- you must really be eff-ed up since it has now been proven by the race policeman that --

[Is there a reason why your physical dexterity would be different when trying to match whites with positive words and blacks with negative words than it would be doing the reverse? If your time is consistently slower for one than for the other, I'd suggest it has less to do with physical dexterity than with mental biases.]

Okay, Jerry, so you offer a reason why someone's response speed would be consistently slower for matching blacks with positive words and whites with negative words than their speed doing the reverse that doesn't involve bias.

I thought Coates's article was rubbish. He says that the outcome, though legal, should greatly "trouble you." He criticizes the law without substantive argument, and highlights irrelevant aspects of it -- the "initial aggressor" rule or the "stand your ground" rule. (Notwithstanding that one juror's comments, Zimmerman should have been found not guilty even without stand your ground.) So, he takes a swipe at the law, but then says, well none of that is important. What's important is slavery. Martin's death was "authored," he says, by a history of injustice toward blacks. We live in a country, Coates says, that ensures that incidents like this will happen. Why is that? Because of our liberal gun laws? No, because the Constitution's mention of slavery, and Thomas Jefferson's "taste for white supremacy" has resulted in "ill messaging" that causes whites to shoot blacks based on race. Never mind intervening events like the Civil War, the civil rights movement, affirmative action, a black man elected president twice, and the giant public outcry surrounding the Zimmerman case. No, we're apparently still laboring under Jeffersonian "white supremacy." I'm not buying it. What's more, even if I did, where's the link to the Zimmerman case? We ignore the evidence that Zimmerman is not in fact not any sort of racist -- e.g., that he called the cops on whites. We merely assume that he unfairly profiled Martin. This isn't a race case. If we want to have a "candid conversation" about race, we might include bogus claims of racism. Without including that, we're not really being candid, are we?

The driving while white idea, even if true, is very much the exception that proves the rule. For one thing, I haven't seen any studies showing that white people are disproportionately likely to be stopped in predominantly black neighborhoods - isn't it also possible that police just make many more stops of people of any race in neighborhoods that are predominantly black?

But let's posit that we think it's reasonable for police to pay more attention to people who are not of the predominant race of the area in which they're traveling. The effect is going to be that black people are stopped way more often than white people, since there are many many more areas that are predominantly white in this country than areas that are predominantly black. So you can't argue that racial profiling affects everyone equally, even if white people are subject to it in certain circumstances.

@Taxpayer your logic is flawed. While there are more 'white' areas there are also more whites. So unless you have evidence that blacks visit white areas more often then whites visit black areas your logic can not apply.

That said we will have some answers in the not too distant future. All stops will be kept track of so in a few years we'll have real data for the first time.

@Dienne: Why no comment on what Dr X posted: the story of a black man who was acquitted after he shot and killed a white child in what he claimed to be self-defense. From the newspaper:

"Cervini's family members say justice wasn't served. They say Christopher was murdered in cold blood, that he'd never been in trouble and Scott acted as judge, jury and executioner."

"The message is that we can all go out and get guns and feel anybody that we feel is threatening us and lie about the fact,” said Jim Cervini, Christopher’s father. “My son never threatened anybody. He was a gentle child, his nature was gentle, he was a good person and he was never, ever arrested for anything, and has never been in trouble. He was 16 years and four months old, and he was slaughtered."

Should we assume this black man was guilty, as you suggest, and force him to prove that he shot in self-defense? The witnesses said the child was screaming 'Please don't kill me. I'm just a kid,' and the black man just kept shooting him.

PS: I wonder why this story hasn't made national news. Is it because the poor dead white child did not look like Obama's hypothetical son?

What do you mean by a corollary test? Are you asking if there is a test that would measure a negative bias in reaction to white faces? If so, this test is testing that as much as its testing reaction to black faces. The test looks at differential processing/reaction time to the different colored faces, so it shows reaction time regardless of the who is taking the test and regardless of whichever way any differential cuts, if a difference is found.

Also, this is just one application of IAT as a research methodology. Poke around a little and you can find questions, hypotheses, support and critiques dealing with what is actually being measured with the method and its various applications.

Oh I don't think it is. I think it's pretty clear that black people visit white areas more frequently than white people visit black areas. And you don't need to think race is important to agree - it's basic geography and probability.

Consider: you have a 30-mile commute to work. What are the odds of you not traveling through any white areas vs. you not traveling through any black areas?

And now all those white Suburban kids who used to have to drive to the South or West side of Chicago can just order their heroin on the internet & have it delivered by FedEx right to their doorstep! See Dave Savini's story on that from the CBS news the other night. Heroin is a real problem in the more affluent suburbs, and now it's easier than anything to get some. Apparently the site is somewhere offshore & they're trying to take it down but that's very difficult when the sale doesn't really happen here, unlike when they go to the drive-through lanes at the local drug corner, which can be shut down if they can catch them operating.

MCN, here's a link to info from the Dept of Labor about the number of college grads working minimum wage jobs. I didn't see anything about grad students in my hasty search. And before you complain about the source, it actually is the Wall Street Journal that the link in the post there goes to. There's even a handy-dandy chart.

"How do we acknowledge the harm already done in order to heal it and move on? How do we confront the systems already in place? How do we take ourselves out of our comfort zone to accept and reconcile the realities of other people?"

I think the best thing we can do is leave people alone to live their own lives. Diversity naturally creates separation of cultures and it's something we just have to live with. Political and cultural divisions are only going to become more pronounced (as you indicate) but we can take reasonable steps toward a more civil society.

We need to do a better job of getting government out of our lives in order to reduce the amount of resentment between those who are being benefited and those who are not. Yes, I get that the government steps in as part of a well-meaning effort to balance the scales but it almost always backfires. Often the poor are made worse off and they resent that, while the upper and middle classes resent the purpose of the law.

The majority of people will always lead segregated lives because people are tribal in nature. No amount of encouragement, official or otherwise, is going to change that. We need to reduce the opportunities for cultures to conflict with each other and favor keeping the peace over trying to level the playing field (which hardly ever works) or trying to bring people together (which usually yields the opposite result). Left alone, most people will get along and try to do right by one another.

And what the hell is Harvard doing making this test freely available for the public’s use?

Human experimentation – including psycho experimentation -- is strictly governed by federal regulations. Researchers must make a formal application and receive formal approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) before human experimentation can take place. The subjects have to be fully informed of the nature and hazards of the research before giving their written consent.

Now Tony believes he might be eff-ed in the head after taking that test. That is exactly what the IRB’s seek to prevent.

And Wendy -- you have to answer first before asking. No answering a question with a question. I promise I will answer yours after you answer mine.

Isn't it safer if heroin is delivered to your door rather than having to go to a bad neighborhood to get it (and being more tempted to use it outside the home)?

I don't think there's anything practical we can do (or should do) to get people to stop using drugs, but I could go along with an age limit on heroin purchases. I'm curious why it's such a big deal what other people are ordering through the mail though.

OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev walk into a bar together to discuss their lives.

OJ says, "I killed my ex wife and her boy toy friend, but I was found not guilty and then in the civil trial, they got all my money and I was broke. I stole my trophies to get some money, and now I am in jail. Crime just doesn't pay." Casey Anthony says, "I killed my baby accidentally on purpose so I could go party, and tried to cover it up, but I was found not guilty. I am broke, unemployable, and no one wants to party with me anymore. I have to hide out. Karma is getting me even if I was able to scam the justice system." George Zimmerman says, "Never assume anything, you make an ass out of yourself and you might have to shoot someone. No matter what the verdict, people will always assume things about me for the rest of your life. Again the karma thing." Jokar says, "Forget about karma... smoke some weed dudes, just chill out. I thought I'd have to be a martyr in my holiest of jihads to get my virgins, but all I had to do was just listen to my brother and I am on the cover of the Rolling Stone and girls want me!"

IAT is actually a very interesting methodology with lots of research behind it, the trouble is that you have to know a lot about the research and a great deal about test construction and interpretation to really appreciate what it's about.

A few points: it's a research instrument, not a clinical instrument. It isn't at all clear what the scores translate to in behavioral terms if any, nor does it measure a construct equivalent to a stable personality trait. In connection with that observation, there is nothing like a cutoff score such as above X there is a 95 percent probability that the examinee will manifest such and such behavior.

Part of the problem with putting this test out in public is that most people who take it don't understand that it does appear to detect certain biases in processing, but what practical meaning these biases have, if any at all, is unknown. Also, we already know there are a number of manipulatios that can cause performance of the test-taker to change.

Now, there's nothing dumb about what the researchers are looking at with the instrument; there are some fascinating applications in cognitive research, but unlike most other research instruments, this one has garnered a lot of public attention because of one of it's more socially provocative applications.

I don't know if they're running afoul of any federal laws because I don't know the source for the funding for their research or whether the information they provide on the site is considered adequate. But personally, I don't think this test should be online because it's administred indiscriminately and provides feedback that really can't meaningfully be interpreted, at least not to the standard of a well-validated clinical test. And even the latter shouldn't be online because there's an ethical duty to provide direct feedback from a live clinician who thoroughly understands testing, so as to avoid misunderstandigs and deal with questions or problematic reactions.

Of course there are commutes that bring white people through black areas, though I'd argue that the interstate doesn't really count. No white people are getting pulled over on the Dan Ryan because the police think that they don't belong there. But there are a heck of a lot more commutes that don't go through any black areas than there are commutes that don't go through any white areas. I don't think you can reasonably dispute that.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.